Shepherd of the Springs
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

This evening we continue our midweek Advent meditations considering How Sinners Meet Jesus. On the basis of our text, let us reflect on how issues of what we consider matters of reason or common sense can become obstacles that block a beneficial reception of Jesus as God’s solution to the problems of sin and evil. So many elements of the Gospel proclamation runs counter to what most consider reasonable. I am not here talking about the evidence that is offered in the historical record concerning the claims of Christ and His presented credentials to be the promised Messiah, I am rather talking about what seems to most people to make sense according to the canons of reason or even just common sense.

Nicodemus is befuddled by Jesus declaration that one must be born again in order to enter the Kingdom of God. He thinks strictly in terms of the physical, temporal state of human existence and thus inquires of Jesus about a silly picture of returning to his mother’s womb. While Jesus responds to set him straight about the character of spiritual rebirth; by no means does He seek to present Nicodemus with a more reasonable picture. Rather, Jesus ups the seeming absurdity by a pithy summary of Holy Baptism - the idea that a real spiritual rebirth into the Kingdom of God actually takes place by the Spirit of God with a few splashes of ordinary water. Think about it for a moment: which claim offend reason or common sense more: The notion of being born again by a return to the womb as in the idea of reincarnation, or the idea that you can become a new creation fashioned after the image of Christ by the spoken words - I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit while water gets poured on your forehead?

Christmas begins the Greatest Story Ever Told, yet a story that at every turn has turned off and turned away so very many who are offended by a barrage of claims that violate and offend the common sense and reasonable thinking of people in every age. Think about it for a moment. Christmas seeks to enlist us as educated thinking people in our right minds to come and worship the Creator of the universe and the Redeemer of human kind as we bow down in worship of a small infant lying in a feed trough incapable of controlling his limbs or bladder. Paul put it this way: In the man Jesus the fulness of God dwells bodily (Col. 1:19). And then the story becomes even more offensive to our reasoned sensibilities. And by the way, he has no earthly father. He spends his early life making condos with his father-in-residence but then as God-with-us achieves the pivotal victory over all the forces of sin and evil by dying a criminal’s wretched death by crucifixion at the hands of Roman and Jewish authorities. Sizing up the consensus judgment in the ancient world about such holy nonsense. St. Paul declared; we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles (I Cor. 1:23).

We admit it. One of our most authoritative and prominent teachers in the Church admits that the Jesus whom we proclaim and teach creates a turn-off for many because of continual offenses to our intellect and sense of religious propriety. But let us get to the heart of the matter about the Gospel of Jesus - who’s birth we are preparing to celebrate - let us get to the real offenses to the sensibilities of sinful human beings that we need to appreciate and not stumble over as we get ready for Christmas. The first is this: We cannot live with Jesus as our Savior from sin unless we are willing to die to sin. By dying to sin, we must remove ourselves from the needs improvement category and count ourselves among those who are dead in our trespasses, lost causes beyond any help to improve. We must determine to repent, not reform. Only repentant - dead in their trespasses - sinners may truly receive Jesus and live with God through Him. He alone in the door into the Kingdom of God and we only become united with him when we unite with His death to sin on the cross, and then are united with Him in His resurrection unto newness of life. And then we must believe and trust that all of this is accomplished - sorry Nicodemus - through our baptism of the Spirit and the splashing of the water. We only get life out of death. Moreover, we only receive the true justice of God, when Jesus gets what we have coming to us, and we get what He has coming to Him - that is, when everybody gets what they do not deserve. How unreasonable is that! The Righteous One gets wrath, and Sinners get mercy. And on the other hand, sinners who wish to receive their just deserts - those who want to get according to the old fashioned way of earning it - they can go to Hell.

Goodness where does the unreasonableness of connecting with God through Jesus end. This God is One, but is co-equally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is a God of wrath Who reveals Himself in His Law where condemns and kills. There is a God of mercy who forgives, restores, and raises up unto new life. Both are the same God. His strength is made perfect in our weakness. He must increase as we must decrease. We walk by faith, not by sight. In the Kingdom of God, He who humbles himself well be exalted, he who exalts himself will be humbled. The first will be last and the last will be first. A thousand years is as a day and a day is as a thousand years. Is it any wonder that He would tell us that His wisdom is foolishness to us and our wisdom is foolishness to Him?

As you would prepare to receive Jesus again this Christmas season, do not be offended by how unreasonable all of this seems to your common sense about the way things are or should be. To help us through these struggles God has sent his prophets, his apostles, and yes, even his angels to set us straight about the truth of the Christmas story and our need for the One who comes in the Name of the Lord. Listen to them. And then do what voice from Heaven said when Jesus identified with us at His baptism - this is my beloved son. listen to him. But is that enough for us to overcome our sense of needing all things to be reasonable and in accord with common sense? No, it is not. We must receive just what Nicodemus is told he needed. We must be born again of water and of the Spirit. Only then can we grasp and hold onto the earthly things that our Lord imparts - for these are the things that have come to earth in His coming and visitation at Bethlehem and in our hearts and lives. About the heavenly things, we will await His final coming when the earthly things pass away and we have been outfit for the heavenly mysteries to be revealed at that time. For now, let us hold our reason in check and prepare for that day.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. A-men.